A flower. Of some sort.

I'd love to say it was an osteospermum because that has a certain attractive lilt to it but I'm not sure it is.

It was captured while investigating someone else's garden in September. The image was a bit of a challenge to process - pollen everywhere!

For the Friday Flora group.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image :)

Tags:   Friday flora flower white yellow macro

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If you had asked me six months ago what these were I wouldn’t have been sure.

They’re feather-shaped “leaves”. But attached to each on a stalk is a round fruit. If you turn the whole thing upside down then it looks a bit like a surfer standing on her board.

They’re the fruiting body of the lime tree. That’s not the citrussy thingy but the deciduous tree of which there are several varieties in Northern Europe.

The tree relies on wind to disperse the seeds away from the parent so the seedlings get some light and don’t compete. The leaf-like sails enable that - in autumn the seeds flutter away like little helicopters.

I took this image on a walk near Sharpness docks, locally - I just loved the interlacing curve patterns they made as they carpeted the ground under the trees.

This is for the Friday Flora group.

Now I wonder why lime trees are called limes when they don’t produce green lemons… Answers on a postcard please :)

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Friday Flora :)

[Handheld in daylight.
Developed and processed from the raw file using Affinity on the iPad.
I used a lighting filter to create the effect of light coming down from the top centre, to add interest in what essentially was a repeating pattern with no focal point.]

Tags:   Friday Flora lime leaves fruit pattern interlocking Freitagsblümchen

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Californian Poppies.

I planted these last year in my garden for the first time and quickly fell in love with them.

They’re not really poppies at all but I can see why they’re called that. They produce a profusion of flowers over a very long period, all delicate and wispy. And the flowers go to sleep at night!

But the overriding association I have with them is simply their colour. It’s just a remarkable orange and I can’t think of them without the word orange poppying into my mind :)

I thought I would try an put that into this image, taken in August last year. So here we have it: orange, the essence of a flower (at least from my perspective lol).

For Friday Flora.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Friday Flora (and weekend) :)

[Handheld in bright daylight.
Developed in Capture One.
Touched up in Affinity, converted to mono in Nik Silver Efex with lots of contrast and darks, and structure in the highlights. Adding back the selective colour in SEfex was straightforward with multiple control points grouped together.
Dark vignette in Affinity.]

Tags:   flower no person nature summer flora leaf garden bright sun outdoors Blur growth fair weather poppy color Floral petal wild rural Friday Flora HFF Californian Poppy Orange selective colour Nik Silver Efex

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This is an image of a flower that I took in April at a garden I visited in Cornwall.

I live in a limestone area where the soil is alkaline. That is great for growing a wide variety of garden plants, but there are some that really struggle. These include camellias, rhododendrons, and azaleas and a number of others.

Visiting gardens in an acid soil area was a novelty and a delight. Both camellias and rhodos have amazing blooms. Lots of clicking ensued...

Just a quick one for the Friday Flora group...

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Freitagsblümchen :)

[Monopod in sunlight.
Developed in Capture One for tonal balance, the red and yellow colours, with lowered Clarity and bumped structure.
Inpainted in Affinity to get rid of white specks and a green leaf in the top left corner (!). Cropped to avoid some of the problem.
Quite a lot of work in Nik Color Efex to get it to look like the way it felt (though, I hope, subtly)- glows, brighten centre, blur vignette, Pro Contrast.
Back in Affinity sharpened with Unsharp Mask, and heavy dark vignette to deal with the remainder of the leaf and to concentrate the eye.]

Tags:   flower nature flora no person beautiful garden leaf petal love color blooming Still Life summer Floral Rose pollen growth bright stigma Closeup Red Friday Flora HFF camellia

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Rhododendrons can be absolutely gorgeous when they are in flower.

There’s a problem though. I’ve found it very difficult to photograph them effectively, at least to get an image that evokes the feeling you get when you look at them.

I almost gave up processing this but thought I would post it anyway for Friday Flora.

I’ll post a larger version of the same image too. I can’t work out which I prefer, so I am leaving it to you to decide. As for me? Probably not either! Ah well, move on...

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Friday Flora :)

[Handheld in daylight.
Developed in Capture One. Processed in Affinity with a fair dose of Nik Color Efex]

Tags:   flower nature no person petal blooming flora summer color delicate beautiful bright Floral garden pollen romance pistil love desktop botanical Rhododendron Nik Color Efex Friday Flora HFF

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